BrockLi Soup

“Fonny, it’s National Drunken Writing Night!”

“Oh, is that today?”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re drinking already.”

“Well shit, I’m in.”

This quarter’s going to be unpleasant. I really don’t want to be taking any of the classes I’m in, but I don’t have any options at this point. Networking (4002-342) might be alright, but I haven’t heard anything good about this prof. Needs Assessment and Tech Transfer will both be easy, but a pain in the neck. Hayden and Mozart is just going to be frustrating, because there’s going to be a fair bit of reading that I don’t want to do. I want to rearrange things to get a different prof for Networking and make my Tuesday and Thursday end earlier, but two of the sections I would need to switch into are full right now.

I can’t even procrastinate in front of the TV any more. We had Sharon’s for the summer, but BP and I took it back the other day. I think BP is planning to buy a new one on payday. Fonny drew us one for the interim, but we can only watch The Dukes of Hazzard.

On the upside, I’m taking racquetball. At the first class today, a number of rules were clarified; our version was pretty close to right, but with a few key differences regarding serves.

I should be OK this quarter, but I know it’s going to drain me. I’ve never been able to handle classes I don’t want to take; last winter, when I was taking Genetic Algorithms and Artifical Intelligence, was absolutely miserable. I know I’m just going to put off the stuff I don’t want to do, and this time I don’t even have a fun class that I can focus my energy on. I shouldn’t have saved all this crap for last.

I can’t wait for this hockey season to start. As part of the Week of Welcome for freshmen, the ice rink had open skating on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, so I went all three nights. It went a lot better than I expected, having not been on ice in six months. My skates are pretty dull, but my feet felt fine, I was doing OK, and my back didn’t even start bothering me until Wednesday night.

It turned out to be a better warm-up for hockey than I expected. I just wanted to spend some time skating hard to get back into it, but when there’s 60 people in the rink, you have to maneuver pretty well to avoid killing freshmen. Really, there’s no better way to practice that than actually doing it. Skating with a stick always makes you better: you focus on handling the puck and ignore your feet, so they do what they need to do. The same thing happens on a full rink: you focus on avoiding people, and your feet just handle it. You can’t think about it too much, or you can’t do it.

I went down a few times, but it was funny every time. Fotios and I tried a high-speed dosido, which resulted in a warning from the rink staff and a bloody elbow. On Wednesday, after 45 minutes of people doing laps, the entire rink was covered in about an eigth-inch of standing water. I took a turn too hard, forgetting how dull the skates were, and went out sideways. I was absolutely soaked, along with everything in my wallet.

I didn’t have much to do today and I felt like shopping, so I picked up some new laces for both my rollerblades and ice skates. I broke one set, so I’ve been swapping a set of laces back and forth between the two pairs of skates, which was wearing them out pretty quick. I also decided to get a new stick, because I cracked the blade at the elbow late last season. It’s still holding together, but I don’t know how much longer it would last, so it’s been relegated to street hockey play only. The new one bends back a little bit at the end of the blade, so it’ll be good for flipping the puck off the wall or over other sticks.

Tomorrow around noon, I’m going shopping again with Lucas and Fonny. Lucas will be getting equipment, like he’s been promising since last winter. Fonny wants to see how much the gear will cost him before he decides if he wants to play, but he sounded pretty interested.

It’s going to be a good quarter.

I went to make dinner tonight and found this on the counter. If I had known he wanted one, I would have bought it for him for Christmas. Hell, I’m willing to spend 99 cents on a friend.